That stuff was all part of the Obama era stimulus bills. Many folks with the ability to lay fiber did so with substantial capitalization from the Feds. Many municipal governments and counties built fiber rings as well.

The result was mostly institutional connectivity. Rural prisons, hospitals, government, factories, and schools got connected. But local franchise agreements make the last mile pretty much impossible.

Huh. ToledoTel is the telco it its service area. It isn't competing with the local telco. I don't think this is an example of municipal networking.

Sorry for the confusion in my response. I didn’t mean to imply that.

Rural telcos had access to this money for sure.

Municipal government really benefited as well — for its own purposes, not municipal broadband.

It looks like ToledoTel is a "Local Exchange Carrier" (LEC). These entities have existed for a long time and are effectively the local incumbent telco and are quite common in more rural areas.

Purchasing IP connectivity from ToledoTel is the same thing as purchasing IP connectivity from Verizon -- they are both the incumbent telco in their respective geographic areas.

Perhaps I should have said "analogous to" and not "the same thing as". I'm not trying to put forth an opinion here, just trying to point out that ToledoTel is the phone company in its service area.